Call in sick *cough cough*

Terrible hangover, passionately overrun morning quickie, baby puked all over your suits...... there are too many reasons / excuses that make you decide to take the day off from work at the last minute. So you pick up the phone with a slightly-faster pumping heart, readjust your mildly excited emotion and dial to your colleague or HR Department. You may put up your exhausted tone, tell the horseshit that will set you free for a day. Not good at lying? Oh cut the crap, but there is actually
a WikiHow for that.

WikiHow - Call in sick when you just need a day off

We all know everyone does this once in a while. Some people may be decent enough to actually pay a visit at the doctor and display the medications on their work desk just to make sure everyone gets it.

"Everybody lies."

However some people tends to do an extra too much just to persuade the others about their lies which have little significance. I hate most when they give a nauseating description on their illness, as detailed as the number of times and texture of their diarrhoea. No one actually fucking cares about the horrific colors of your puke! And everyone knows you simply did not want to come to work and so you faked your sickness. Shouldn't you be so exhausted from being unwell? Why don't you just shut the fuck up and take some rest?

It begins from a funeral

The weather has been depressingly cloudy for the past week. The air was thick and humid, making you so uncomfortable even just to stand still. It finally starts pouring this morning. This is very usual during the Summer of an Asia city. But today is particularly unusual for my family. It is the funeral service of my grandmother.

Death is a taboo for Chinese, it is mysterious, it is the "you-know-who has you-know-what" saying with half your lips sealed and with this "you know what i'm sayin" head tilting. It is not death which makes you fear, it is how Chinese handle the undertakings that brings you the creeps.

It will take 2 days to complete the service, and I have to ask for leave one week in advance. This is when the awkwardness and troubles begin.

First of all, you must tell your colleagues about the passing of your family member so they may choose to stay away from you. Yes, for some Chinese who is rather conservative reckon the passing of ones is contagious and that family shall be isolated for a  period of time. A colleague has been pregnant (who is therefore extra superstitious and paranoid), and so I'm obligated to declare the issue like you declare your health status at the Customs. Due to the mental hurdle a Chinese has on funeral affairs, it is a delicate situation to tell the others about your misfortune. The delivery of message usual goes like this:

Me: Hmm...you know...hmmm...hmm...well...my grandma....you know...hmmm.....has gone...
Colleague A: ...........oh..........
[End] 


OR 

Me: Hmm...you know...hmmm...hmm...well...my grandma....you know...hmmm.....has gone...

Colleague B: ...........oh..........

She just pretended she didn't hear it.

[End]

Chinese sucks at expressing sympathy. Mainly because they just don't feel sorry, since your loss has nothing to do with them. Awkwardness is what you get most of the time when you try to break out the bad news. The above "dialogue" happened when I broke it to my boyfriend too.

To further prove themselves as a cold-blooded fuck, Chinese company owner introduces you to the Non-Claimable-Compassion Leave as part of your employment benefit. This Harry-Pottery sort of thing gives you the warm and fussy glow when it was written on the leave application form, telling you how merciful your company has been to its employees you ungrateful-son-of-a-bitch. But when you lodge your application form asking for the compassion leave, the three-headed guard dog (aka Human Resource Officer) will tear your form into pieces, telling you that your application is not legit, giving you all sort of reject reasons. When a single-headed man play with the three-headed dog, you will never win but die exhausted.

This is how another funeral needed to be planned.

A slightly pissed start

I have been thinking to start a blog for a while and here it is, to record my mumble-jumbo, the piss-off encounters at work. The first name came in my mind for this blog was "A grumble a day", and it was taken. So this word "PISSED" kicked in, and you'll be seeing a lot of it, literally.